1 December 2016 - EDF Energy · 1 December 2016 Project Overview Jim Crawford Sizewell C Project...

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EDF Energy Sizewell C Community Forum

1 December 2016

Attendees:

Brian Stewart OBE, Sizewell C Community Forum Chair

Ian Bryant, Head of Planning, EDF Energy

Richard Bull, Head of Transport Planning, EDF Energy

Rebecca Calder, EDF Energy

Jim Crawford, Sizewell C Project Director, EDF Energy

Hugh Gilmour, EDF Energy

Hugh Hutton, EDF Energy

Tom McGarry, Head of Communications, Sizewell C Project, EDF Energy

Carly Vince, EDF Energy

Peter Palmer, Aldeburgh Town Council

Eric Atkinson, Aldringham-Cum-Thorpe Parish Council

David Burns, Benhall and Sternfield Parish Council

David Hepper, Bredfield Parish Council

Ernie Hare, Darsham Parish Council

Geoff Abell, Dunwich Parish Meeting

Ian Norman, Farnham with Stratford St Andrew Parish Council

Oliver Hurlock, Hacheston Parish Council

Edwina Galloway, Kelsale cum Carlton Parish Council, Knodishall Parish Council

Terry Hodgson, Leiston-cum-Sizewell Town Council

Peter Chaloner, Little Glemham Parish Council

Margaret Carswell, Marlesford Parish Council

Roy Dowding, Middleton Cum Fordley Parish Council

Kenneth Parry Brown, Peasenhall Parish Council

Jeff Hallett, Pettistree Parish Council

Mike Stevenson, Rendlesham Parish Council

Stephen Brett, Theberton & Eastbridge Parish Council

Arlette Smith, Westleton Parish Council

Joan Girling, Together Against Sizewell C

Ben McFarland, RSPB Minsmere Nature Reserve

Jon Swallow, Sizewell Parishes Liaison Group

Richard Smith MVO, Suffolk County Council

Ian Pratt, Suffolk Coastal District Council

Tony Cooper, Suffolk Coastal District Council

Phillip Ridley, Suffolk Coastal District Council

Tim Rowan-Robinson, The Suffolk Coast DMO

Sizewell C Community Forum EDF Energy

1 December 2016

Pat Hogan, Sizewell Residents Association

Mike Taylor, Suffolk Coastal Friends of the Earth

Alan Miller, Suffolk Wildlife Trust

Chris Betson, Leiston and District Community Partnership

Nick Mayo, Leiston, Saxmundham and District Citizens Advice

Simon Barlow, Environment Agency

Gareth Dalglish, Natural England

Andy Osman, Suffolk Resilience Forum

Leigh Jenkins, Suffolk Constabulary

Introductory Remarks

Brian Stewart OBE Community Forum Chair

For those of you who do not know me, I am Brian Stewart. I am the appointed independent chair of this Sizewell C Community Forum. It is some time since we last met formally and in some ways I think we are resetting the Forum here tonight. That is why there is no agenda or any minutes for the last meeting. We are going to make the most of our time here tonight by updating you on the Stage 2 consultation proposals which, as I am sure you are all aware, were launched on 23 November just over a week ago. As your chairman, I was very insistent that there would be a formal meeting of this forum fairly early on during the consultation period, so one week in we have done that. Hopefully for future meetings of the Forum we will try and give you some further formal notice but it is good to see so many of you here tonight.

I would just like to remind you of the purpose of this forum. The terms of reference are all on the website, but just let me read out and remind everybody of what the terms of reference are. It is to consider and advise on issues that might affect the local community and key stakeholders as a result of EDF Energy’s planning proposals, principally those arising from the development of a new nuclear power station on land adjacent to the existing power stations and any other associated developments. Consideration of the principle of building new nuclear power stations is outside the scope of the Forum. I just wanted to remind everybody of that.

As I said, the main purpose of tonight is to hear a presentation by the nuclear energy team and Jim Crawford is going to introduce those as they are first called to speak. Before we do that, we have got two hours for this meeting. In view of the fact that it is now winter and some of you may have quite some journey to go – I certainly do – I will be trying to ensure the meeting ends on time at 21.00. The presentation, I am told, may last about 40 minutes and that will leave the rest of the time for you to ask questions. I do emphasise ‘questions’; this is not a place to do grandstanding or speeches. It will be a time for you as your representatives of various organisations to ask questions of the EDF Energy team.

With that introduction, let me hand over, firstly to Jim Crawford, who is the Sizewell C Project Director. Jim has been in that role since March of this year, but he is familiar with the geography and many of you, having previously had an important role at Sizewell B. Let me hand over to Jim.


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Project Overview

Jim Crawford Sizewell C Project Director, EDF Energy

Thank you very much, Brian. I would like to add my thanks to all of you for coming out tonight. It is a very important part of our consultation process so I am looking forward to the questions you ask, the points of clarification, but most importantly the opportunity to explain what is in Stage 2 of the consultation, recognising it has been a number of years since Stage 1 which actually closed in the early part of 2013.

As a little reminder of what we are talking about when we talk about Sizewell C and the proposed development, this is an artist’s impression behind me of a twin EPR. That representation is of the buildings and not necessarily a final visual representation. We would work out that as we go through the process and in conjunction with local planning authorities come up with the best way to mitigate the visual impact of the station as we move forward. It is very similar to the site that is being constructed at Hinkley Point. The idea is to replicate the design and benefit from a fleet approach as we move on.

In terms of the consultation process, it has been some time since Stage 1. That is simply due to the fact that it has always been the case that as part of EDF Energy’s strategy, Hinkley Point C would come first, followed by Sizewell C and potentially Bradwell B. We said we could not move forward until Hinkley Point C had reached a final investment decision and contract closure. That was achieved in October this year and then we launched Stage 2 in November some several weeks after that contract closure to ensure that we met our commitment to proceed to Stage 2 as soon as possible. The process will last until 3 February. There will be 23 exhibitions of which there have been eight so far. A lot of the material issued at the exhibitions is around the room for you to have a look at that later but I am assuming that a number of you probably have already attended an exhibition or hopefully are planning to do so in the future.

Stage 2 will consist of several proposals which have been closed down to some extent since Stage 1 but there are a number which still have open options. They are genuinely open options and we are very keen to hear the feedback from yourselves and from the local communities through the various fora whether it is responding through the website or even comments on the questionnaire at the end of the summary document which you all have in front of you. Or by any other means, such as dropping into the Leiston office where the team will be happy to take any questions or points that you raise as part of the consolation process. At the end of this presentation we will summarise what will come next.

Our approach is aligned with the government’s view on meeting the climate change challenge the country faces. We want to continue to contribute to the nation’s future needs using low-carbon energy. Sizewell C will have enough capability to produce enough energy for more than 6 million homes in the UK, building upon the experience and the legacy left from Sizewell A and Sizewell B in this locality.

Should it go ahead, the project will create significant business, training and job opportunities for local and regional communities. Some of that will come out during the presentation today and we recognise that a significant construction project, such as the one we are proposing, can have significant adverse effects and it is up to us to try and mitigate those effects as best as possible.


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That is why we are seeking views from you and local communities throughout the Stage 2 consultation.

With that, we will move forward and I will hand over to Ian Bryant.

Key Changes from Stage 1

Ian Bryant Head of Planning, EDF Energy

Thank you. What I am going to do is refer you to where most of the slides appear in the document. This particular one is on page 7 of the summary document. This slide shows the key changes that have been made since Stage 1 and also the further detail that we have put together since Stage 1. For the main development site I think probably the first thing to say is that, in essence, where the power station is going and the footprint for the construction of the power station has not changed. Having said that, there are some important modifications that I will touch upon.

Working from East to West, one of the things we have included in Stage 2 are our proposals for our sea defences and these will be along the foreshore. I will refer you to page 11 in the summary. I think this will help to explain what we are doing. We clearly need to protect the power station from flooding and keep it stable. The sea defences will be 10 metres high which is about the same as Sizewell B. What that CGI shows on page 11 is also the slope of the sea defences, which is a one-in-three slope. On the eastward side you can see the footpath incorporated into the design. We are looking at quite natural coastal vegetation in terms of landscaping. The other element of this is to tie these defences into the existing B station. That is an important element.

Moving on to the power station footprint, again there has really been very little change but we have widened the SSSI corridor in this area. It is a bit tighter than at Stage 1. We have also moved the crossing of the SSSI a bit further east into the neck of the designation there. We have had to introduce a couple of facilities and that has driven a slight increase in the southwest corner of footprint but overall our landtake of the SSSI designation is on a par with what we said at Stage 1. It is around five hectares.

Moving further into the construction area, in response to concerns raised at Stage 1 we provided quite a lot more detail on how this land is going to be used. It is not really in the summary document, but I would recommend you look at, particularly, chapter 7 of the consultation document proper where that goes into quite a lot of detail. Most of this land in this area will be used for contractors and further over we have got an area for spoil management. In the north-west corner we have designated fields for borrow pit purposes. I will come onto that in terms of the combinations that we are consulting on.

Further over to the west is the area for the campus. What this shows is the footprint for option 1. We have two options and Rebecca, my colleague, will get into those options in a bit. The key element of option 1 is actually the diversion of the road up to Eastbridge and that is associated with option 1 and not option 2. That is a key element. As the existing road runs through the campus, that will be closed under this option. The other key change concerns the junction of the B1122. At Stage 1 we proposed a T-junction for that access. Now we are proposing a roundabout. For those


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familiar with the junction there it is just by the Eels Foot sign, the roundabout will go up into that field towards the west so it is slightly offset from the road itself. We think that could work. Further down, in this area, we received comments on the potential impact on Leiston Abbey so we have pulled back from that field, although we do need part of it to enable the green rail route to come up into the site. We have pulled back a bit from there. The other thing to note is that the blue areas are the water management zones and these really are a sustainable means of dealing with the water from the higher-standing areas across the site. That is the purpose of those.

I am just going to touch on the proposals of what we call ‘associated development’ but Richard, my colleague, will pick up on those in more detail. Looking at the A12, at the north part we are proposing our northern park and ride at Darsham. Our reserve site is a bit further north at the junction of the A12 and the A144. The southern park and ride is proposed at Wickham Market and our reserve site is now down at Woodbridge. We have dropped the Potash Corner proposal. There are other proposals as far as the A12 is concerned. We are looking at online and bypass proposals at Farnham and Stratford St Andrew. We are also looking at junction option improvements at Yoxford at the junction with the B1122.

Regarding the B1122 itself, we are looking at some online improvements just south of Middleton and south of Theberton to straighten the road there. We are also looking at improvements in Theberton itself with regard to pedestrian access. The area immediately to the east of Leiston – we call it ‘Big Field’ - it has got a longer name on the consultation - but its land alongside the Eastlands Industrial Estate. We are actually proposing a small caravan site there, which is a change from Stage 1, and we are also proposing the potential for the rail line to be extended into that field. The other alternative to that proposal is what we call the green rail route, which is the one that comes up into the site itself.

Those outline our proposals for the development. This is the permanent arrangement; following construction. Obviously: the power station itself, the sea defences I mentioned, the crossing at SSSI. Concerning the access road and the junction I mentioned a bit earlier, that road will be used during construction but we will modify this road. The aim is to make it a country road if we can. It will not be lit, certainly for the majority of it. We will need some modest lighting in the carpark area and probably in the junction itself but we will aim not to light that road. On the subject of lighting, we set out a strategy in Stage 2 and we will continue working on that but we are very aware we are in a darks skies environment so we will do our very best to keep lighting down. However, clearly we need to operate the power station safely.

Coming to environmental considerations, we know a lot about the area. We have been looking at it for several years so we have what we call a baseline understanding of what is there. Clearly as we develop our proposals, we need to assess specific impacts against some of these topics. We have put some information into our Stage 2 consultation, but it is fair to say those assessments will build up and provide more information at Stage 3. We are doing an awful lot of work on understanding the impact of our development, which is feeding through into modifying our designs.

On the construction footprint for the power station, I will just give you some facts about the proposal. Construction is going to last between 10 and 12 years and we are expecting a stagger of one year between reactor units. The main development site, which is all the land you see which is not woodland, is around 300 hectares. In terms of siting, we clearly need to be as near to the power station as possible to get it built. There are sensitivities around the platform itself – Sizewell Marshes and Minsmere. We have Sizewell B immediately to the south and we have the heritage coast to the east. What that is doing is driving our construction in a more east-west configuration. It is really on higher land, agricultural land and commercial forestry that are not as sensitive. Most of this is still in the AONB though. We are looking to avoid the lower land to the north towards Minsmere and obviously to the south towards Sizewell Marshes. The other thing is to say is that


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we are looking to take advantage of the existing woodland north and south of the construction area. We are talking about Ashwood, Great Mount Wood, Dunwich Forest and Kenton Hill. That does form some screening. I do not think it will screen the construction area entirely but it will help to screen the development.

I spoke earlier about borrow pits. One of the things that is driving the amount of land we need for the construction footprint is that there is some material in here which we will need to excavate which will require sorting through to establish which is suitable for development and which is unsuitable. We will need to put the unsuitable material into a borrow pit facility in the northwest. We will store the material that may be suitable in the spoil management area. The sequence will be to excavate an area for the borrow pits and store those arisings because we actually think that that material would be useful then to dig the unsuitable material out and of the suitable material and deposit into the borrow pits. As we start to build the power station we will use the material in this area for backfilling purposes. You will see in the consultation that the peak height of that spoil mound is a range of 20 to 35 metres. It is not there for very long because as soon as we start to build the power station we will begin to backfill. We are saying that the peak height will be for about a year but it will be a feature.

The other thing to say is that that spoil area will consist of different spoil mounds. We were showing these stylistically in the presentation but I do not think it will look like that. It will be a series of mounds of different types that we will use for different purposes. My final slide is to do with the SSSI crossings. Obviously they are going across a SSSI. It is important for us to get this right. We are crossing what is probably a Victorian-engineered waterway. Generally those sorts of waterways are more suitable for culverting. We are going out with four options. There are two bridge options – a single span and a three span – and two causeway options. We are favouring a causeway option. It is going to be a more straightforward operation because we need to use as little land as possible, if we go down the bridge route we are going to need to put short-term bridges in and temporary bridges in whereas the option one causeway will be a single operation and we think that should be less destructive.

In terms of usage of SSSI land, the Option 1, which we want to go for, to give you an idea as part of the overall SSSI landtake, is 5.35 hectares. The option that uses the least land will use 5.04 hectares so the difference between those options in terms of the SSSI landtake is 0.21 hectares. This gives you the idea that the difference we are talking about is not very much. Also, there is a view that once the causeway is planted up it will sit better in the marshes landscape than a bridge. There is something in that. The affected habitats, along with all the other hectares in the SSSI is already being taken care of in terms of offsetting the other work we have been doing at Aldhurst Farm. We should do really well and it is up and running. I am now going to hand you over to my colleague, Rebecca.

Socio-Economics

Rebecca Calder EDF Energy

I have met quite a lot of you, I think, but for those who have not me, I lead the socio-economic section of the work. I am going to take you on a whistle-stop tour of Chapter 5 of the consultation document. No doubt I will not cover everything so I will be available at the end for questions.


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We will start with the local economy, which I hope is really the good news of the project, which is the economic, benefits, the education and skills benefits that the project will bring. These are really important to us and, I’m sure, important to the local community as well. The diagram here shows the workforce profile. At the peak of construction we think we will have 5,600 workers onsite. Of those, 36% will come from local communities. Those are people who are already living here with a commute of up to around 90 minutes. That is around 2,000 workers locally, 3,600 therefore coming from elsewhere.

That split does not stay consistent throughout the build so through our civils works that are more akin to skills such as housebuilding, we think the split is near 50% local people and 50% coming from elsewhere. For things like mechanical and electrical which are more nuclear specialist skills that split moves closer to 30% local, 70% non-local. We have done a lot of work with the local authorities on this. Our aim is not just to hit numbers: it is not about numbers of local people into work, it is about quality of jobs as well and getting local people to access the higher-paid and higher-skilled jobs. Although, clearly maintenance and service roles on campus are going to be important but we do want local people in better jobs as well.

We are doing a huge amount of work at the moment with Judith Mobbs and her team at the Council. Paul Warmington has been appointed and he sits between the council and the FE colleges. We are really trying to understand what is being done locally, what other energy companies in the area are doing and we are looking at how we can link in with Developing Suffolk Talent in particular, how we can enhance that and work with it to bring our own skills and education initiatives into the county. About 12 hours ago, Tom and I were at Sir John Lehman School launching the Young Chamber initiative there. Again, there is a lot of work going on with the county, and district councils as well.

Supply chain is actually a key source of local employment as well. I’m sure a lot of you know and have heard of the Somerset Larder example in Hinkley Point where we have a consortium of local food providers that have come together to provide food for the campus and the construction site. They are now at a size where they can start offering their own apprenticeships and skills development opportunities through supply chain as well as direct employment on the project.

I will just quickly cover another couple of areas which we know are of key interest and importance locally, such as tourism. We are aware that tourism is really important in this area and we are aware that we need to do everything we can to ensure that the tourist industry continues as it is through construction and after construction. We are working with the DMO, Visit East Anglia, Visit Suffolk and local authorities, really to understand what the tourist offer here is, who comes and why people come. Then we will be looking at what potential impacts our project has and looking at how we tackle those. We realise, as well, it is not just about traffic or noise. It is also about the perception - we need to make sure people know that Suffolk is open for business. At Stage 3 we hope to have some proposals down on what sort of things we will be doing to approach that.

Public services and community facilities are obviously hugely important as well and that involves ensuring policing, ambulance and the fire service can deal with the increase in demand and support both our work and the local community but also concerns access to doctors, education, social services and a whole range of issues. Working with all those bodies and looking at how we tackle those capacity issues is going to be a real key focus for us from Stage 2 to Stage 3.

I mentioned before that we would have 3,600 people coming in from outside the area. Those people will obviously need accommodation. The starting point of our accommodation strategy is that we want to deliver as many local economic benefits as possible and that means having our workers staying in the community and spending their money in the community. However, this is


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obviously a small rural area. Tourism is very important and there are some people with particular housing needs, particularly in places like Leiston. We need to be very careful that we do not displace tourists and local residents so we have three elements to our accommodation strategy. One is the accommodation campus and that is hugely important to us both in terms of reducing pressure on the local community but also in terms of the operational efficiency of the construction site and making it an attractive place for people to work.

Although there are 5,600 workers at peak there are around 25,000 roles through the build. We do not want 25,000 different people coming to work on the site. We want to cycle people through those roles and one of the key things will be the availability of accommodation and the quality of accommodation. The campus is absolutely essential for that. Putting it on the development site means people can walk to work and it also means that we have the most efficient site for flexible working and out of hours working meaning people doing jobs like continuous concrete pours and things can remain close. That is a real key part of our strategy.

The second part is delivering local economic benefits by workers staying in the local area so we envisage that of the 1,200 that will not be in the campus, we would expect about 400 in private rented accommodation, around 400 in tourist accommodation and about 400 who will probably move to the area permanently and buy housing. The third part of our accommodation strategy is an accommodation office. That will provide one place where workers can book. It will also mean that people can advertise any accommodation which is not rated at the moment and that local people can register if they would like to rent out spare rooms. There will be one place that they can do that. That is one contact for our workers.

As Ian mentioned, the temporary caravan park is a new proposal on the land east of the Eastlands Industrial Estate. We know from Hinkley and other projects like West Burton, but also things like Heathrow – that workers will want to bring caravans. What we absolutely do not want is for workers to bring caravans and have a word with a nice local farmer and put them in a field because we then have no control over it. We have done a lot of work with Suffolk Coastal DC about looking at local caravan sites where we might be able to increase capacity in the sites that exist, but also potentially putting a new caravan park on this area.

Pat Hogan, Sizewell Residents Association

Will this be a controlled site?

Rebecca Calder

We can talk about it more at the end, but yes, it will be a controlled site. The advantages will be that we can make sure the standards are right and we can therefore control worker behaviour onsite. Obviously that is a whole new proposal. We do not know what the reaction will be to that so we are really keen to get as much feedback as possible on what people think about the caravan park and that location.

Just to go into a little more detail, Ian has mentioned some of this. Hugh explained in spring 2014, why we chose the development site campus. We are consulting on three options, basically in the same place. The first option is more akin to what you saw in Stage 1 so you have got three- and four-storey buildings, a single storey carpark and Eastbridge road diverted. That would be a permanent diversion around the outside of the campus. The other two options are all the accommodation blocks to the east of Eastbridge Road. They would be three-, four- and five-storey because obviously we are using less land and the car park would have to be a stacked carpark; a two-tiered car park in there.


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One of the options has the sports facilities onsite and the other options have it offsite: Option 2.1 and 2.2. We are really keen, as well, to hear feedback on this. The campus will go once construction is complete. There will be nothing there. The land will be completely remediated. The advantage of moving sports facilities offsite is that we could leave those. It would also mean if we put them somewhere like Leiston, local children who probably cannot get up to this site could come and use them much more easily. The disadvantage, of course will be that our workers would have to go offsite to go to those sports facilities. We are really asking the community what they think about that balance of issues. I would just like to reiterate that for those two options there is no diversion of Eastbridge road. I know there has been a concern for some people at the exhibitions so far. I will now pass over to Richard who is going to cover the transport issues.

Transport

Richard Bull Head of Transport Planning, EDF Energy

Good evening, everybody. I look after the transport side of the proposals. In terms of strategy, I really see this as trying to minimise the impact of our construction project on the local communities and that is what our transport strategy should do. In order to achieve that we are looking at sea and rail where we can and they form part of our proposals at Stage 2. Additionally, road improvements are proposed where appropriate where we need to mitigate the impact of our development. Obviously Rebecca has spoken about the campus, which minimises trips on the road between the accommodation and the main construction site. Concerning the park and ride, we have two sites there that will provide parking for travelling workers. We will bus them to the site. Concerning local bus services, direct bus services will also form part of this strategy. Additionally, we would like to encourage cycling not just in the workforce but in the local community as well.

While I remember, page 36 of the summary document details an offroad cycle route which commences just along Sizewell gap and travels the east of Lover’s Lane and moves into the Aldhurst farmland and then continues offroad using a number of controlled crossings up to the main construction entrance. That certainly is a worth a look but it does not form a slide in this proposal.

Looking at the rail, we have two options here. The first option at the top is the rail extension into the main construction site, so it branches off the existing branch line before reaching Leiston. It moves across Buckleswood Road so we are proposing to stop the road up. There are a couple of footpath diversions and at the point where it reaches Abbey Road there will be a level crossing. We will realign the junction of Abbey Road and Lover’s Lane slightly to the south to accommodate the level crossing. From that point on the railroad will continue across into the construction site. The second option uses the land east of Eastlands Industrial Estate as in the lower drawing. This is on page 23 of the summary document. We are proposing a railhead on this land where we could discharge trains and fit a temporary laydown area for materials. In this option we would then need to use HGVs along Lover’s Lane to transport the materials to the main construction site.

In order for either of these proposals to work, we need to be able to get freight along the east Suffolk line and then the branch line and that is particularly challenging with the hourly passenger service we have currently. We are therefore discussing with network rail currently what options we


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have in terms of investing in infrastructure to provide additional capacity for our freight trains. That study is underway and we will get results of that study sometime next year and that will inform our proposals at Stage 3.

Moving onto the sea element, we have two jetty options here. There is a wide jetty which would be multifunctional and capable of importing bulk materials, exporting if required and accommodating extremely large loads. Option 2 is a smaller version. That will not be for importing bulk materials. The third option is a beach landing facility which will be used for abnormally large deliveries and, again, not bulk materials. That would also be required for the operational phase of the station. For questions on the sea Hugh is much closer to the sea proposals than I am and you can ask him questions on that.

In terms of park and ride, we have two park and ride sites, as shown on pages 26 and 27 of the summary document. Starting off with the northern site at Darsham, which currently provides 1,000 parking spaces, the access junction is opposite the existing petrol station. We have done a lot of work to consider whether it is appropriate to have that access there. We have done some microsimulation modelling taking into account the existing traffic there, the impact of the level crossing and the interaction with traffic north and south of the Yoxford junction. We are confident that that will work based on the capacity of vehicles that we are projecting to use the park and ride site. The entrance will be just opposite the petrol station.

We have single-storey support buildings on the park and ride sites which obviously applies to both the southern and northern site. Clearly there are similarities. Landscaping and lighting will be key. We understand people’s concerns with regards to lighting spill and we need to have a sensitive lighting strategy to reduce that. Furthermore, concerning drainage with the hardstanding areas we will need to ensure that runoff is controlled and managed. We are looking at the southern park and ride site, at Wickham Market, where there are 900 spaces.

There are two differences to the northern site. One is that the area at the top section is proposed as a HGV holding area in the event of an incident and as part of the DCO process we will need to formalise a traffic incident management plan. I would expect that plan to define specific incidences where we would be allowed to use that area to hold HGVs. We also have a large area on the main entrance plaza on the main site that can also accommodate HGVs in the event of an incident. Also on this southern site we are going to have a postal consolidation facility. At Stage 1 we included freight management facilities within these proposals. We have withdrawn that. We feel that we can manage freight effectively with an electronic system using traffic cameras and managing vehicles through technology rather than a physical freight management facility. Moving on to the A12, - as detailed on pages 30 to 33 of the summary document if you want to refer to those - there are four options here.

The first option is a ‘no change’ option. We felt that the other options certainly have an environmental impact and if people viewed that that environmental impact was more significant than the impact of the traffic then they may choose to comment on a ‘no change’ strategy but we have three other options as well. Option 2 is the widening of the existing bend in Farnham so that was in Stage 1. It is a slightly more refined design but essentially it will involve knocking down the post office stores on the apex of the bend and widening the bend.

Option 3 is the one village bypass scheme. There are two variants of this: options 3A and 3B. 3A is access to Farnham from the north through a signalised junction on the Sweffling road and in that scenario there would be no access out of Farnham to the south. The opposite is option 3B where there would be a junction prior to the junction in the south allowing access to Farnham but there would be no access out of Farnham to the north. We are particularly keen to understand how residents of Farnham and the local area feel about those options for that particular scheme.


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Option 4 is the two village bypass scheme travelling south of Stratford St Andrew and Farnham. It is obviously a much larger scheme. The design that we have put into Stage 2 is the SCC design that they commissioned with AECON. They have allowed us to include that within Stage 2. We would look to develop that design and may well tweak the alignment if we chose to take that forward to Stage 3.

Let’s move on to the B1122. Ian mentioned the proposals along this road. These are really safety-driven currently. There’s a scheme at Mill Street to improve visibility for traffic exiting Mill Street turning right to lower the level of the road on the right side and there’s some pedestrian enhancements within Theberton and there’s a realignment of the B1122 between Theberton and the main site entrance. We are also proposing to receive people’s views on reducing the speed limit as well between villages to see whether that would be an option to propose to the local authorities and the police.

Lastly we have the options for Yoxford. We have two options to improve the junction between the B1122 and the A12. Option 1 is the roundabout which is situated slightly north of the existing junction. There will be some landtake here so we would need more than the existing highway. Option 2 is a signalised junction which would actually move into the existing highway footprint. Those are the two options for consideration at Yoxford.

Next Steps and Consultation Update

Tom McGarry Head of Communications, Sizewell C Project, EDF Energy

Good evening. I am based at the Sizewell C information office on the Leiston High Street. I think I have met most people in the room, if not in the office then maybe in your own particular village halls or in your own homes. Thank you for all your hospitality. I am just here to say a word or two about the next steps but also a little bit about the current consultation. So far, since we started the consultation last week we have had eight public exhibitions and we also gave an internal presentation to colleagues at Sizewell B. We have engaged with over 1,000 local residents already and we have another 15 public exhibitions that will run until 19 December. I know that there are various times that are set out in the timetable. That is essentially because we are aiming to take those 23 exhibitions to as many locations as possible so that they can be as accessible as possible.

However, sometimes, naturally that cannot help all residents and as many of you here today work in the heart of your communities as parish councillors I make a bit of an appeal for your help in terms of those people who are hard to reach, for whatever reason. It may be mobility issues and finding it difficult to get out of the house. It may be that they cannot actually get to the exhibition because for whatever reason they missed the date of their local one or indeed because of our general lack of superfast broadband. If there is difficulty in terms of engaging please can you let them know to contact us on our Freephone number or by email or indeed come into the office. We can do home visits. We can take responses by phone. We are also getting the summary document and indeed the questionnaire recorded to help the digitally impaired and so on. Indeed, if anyone needs it translated we can pay for that service too. Please let us know.


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One of the new features of theses exhibitions is a computer-generated image of the overall area showing not just the Sizewell C site but also a number of the associated developments too. This just gives an early indicative view of what the visual impact of some of these developments will be from an array of different places. All of your parishes are actually represented on this particular package. We have an improved and validated pilot here this evening so if you wanted to go and have a look at that at the end, please go over and see Sean or indeed ask for him at your local public exhibition.

From 22 December to 4 January, even though the office will be closed, we will still be taking responses and indeed questions throughout that period of time and in January we will be available then once the public exhibitions are over at your request to come and give presentations to community groups, parishes and town councils. We will prioritise those parishes that have not hosted a public exhibition so I am looking particularly at Dunwich, Peasenhall, Little Glemham and Kelsale cum Carlton so you will go up the list because we haven’t been in town yet.

I also want to alert you and your parish clerks that you should have received an email from Planning Aid England. I do not actually know what that email says. All we are doing is paying for the service. It is totally independent and at arm’s length from us. It is supposed to provide you with any advice you need as parish councils to respond to the consultation. The third of February is the very firm deadline. After Stage 1 we did do a ‘call around’ to some parishes where we noted an absence of a response. We will not be doing that again; 3 February is the deadline. What we will aim to do is probably an early assessment of the feedback. After Stage 2 we intend to come back to this Forum and give you a summary of the response that was received. What will happen then is that we will undertake as a team, further assessment work and continue to develop our strategies and our proposals in the light of the feedback but also further environmental assessments and surveys will be necessary as we make an approach to a later consultation at Stage 3 on our preferred proposals.

That is not to negate the possibility of perhaps smaller stages of consultation on specific parts of the development. Potentially the aim will be to progress to the third stage of consultation after which we will then submit our planning proposals to the planning inspectorate and then they have, more or less, 18 months in which to make their recommendation to the Secretary of State for what is now the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. That is quite enough from us so I will hand back to the chair.

Questions & Answers

Brian Stewart

Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Jim. Thanks for finishing more or less right on the time that you said you would take. In a moment I am going to open this up for you to ask questions. I would ask you to help me in encouraging us all to do this on an orderly basis and particularly to help our note taker correctly attribute remarks to you we are going to use a couple of rolling mics. When it is your turn to ask a question and you have a mic, please say who you are and who you are representing. Obviously it is for forum members or their representatives only. That is who we want to hear from tonight. Let’s now do that.


1 December 2016

Jon Swallow, Sizewell Parishes Liaison Group

I know you said do not make statements on massive stockpile areas and borrow pits; just ask questions…

Brian Stewart

I will be very hard on that.

Jon Swallow

I am Jon Swallow, chair of the Sizewell Parishes Liaison group, parish council for Theberton and Eastbridge and a member of TEAGS. Could I ask EDF what alternative site locations have they looked at, and the distribution of this document is that going by post to people? Will the slides that you have shown this evening be available later?

Rebecca Calder

As set out in Stage 1, we had three sites: development site campus, a site near Sizewell and a site near Leiston. It is those three that we looked at and I think you were at the meeting in spring 2014 where we explained why we had chosen the development site campus. That was all set out in Stage 1 and in that presentation.

Tom McGarry

The summary document is available at all public exhibitions and on request. A summary of the summary was distributed to over 30,000 homes and businesses within a 10-mile radius of Sizewell on the very first day of the public consultation last week, subject to Royal Mail getting it there on time. That is this document. Everybody should have received it and that directed people on the back to all of the public exhibitions as indeed who to call if you wish to have any documentation. The other question, I think, related to the availability of the presentation. Naturally I would think the presentation is best delivered with a presenter so that is why we are available throughout January but it can be available in a pdf form on the website without any trouble. However, as always with a PowerPoint presentation it is better to have the full context.

Stephen Brett, Theberton & Eastbridge Parish Council

Stephen Brett, chairman of the Theberton & Eastbridge Parish Council. If the spoil tips get to 20to 35 metres high how are you going to stop in-blowing? Furthermore, regarding the borrow pits, can you explain the nature of the soil and the materials you will be putting in the borrow pit? Could you also explain a bit more about the water management?


I am Hugh Hutton. I work for EDF Energy and the engineering construction is my specialism. In terms of the spoil tips, there is best practice in terms of managing areas where material is stored. That includes measures such as grassing over areas which are going to be stored for a long time. It includes damping down areas where there is potential for dust being raised. We will be deploying best practice in order to manage those stockpiles. As Ian mentioned, the maximum height of the stockpiles will be for a maximum period of about a year. It is an issue as is a lot of the construction site, including the haul roads, where we have to manage these sorts of issues. We will have a


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document that describes our processes and arrangements for doing this, and it is a normal area where the local authorities hold us to account for doing the best we can.

The process for the borrow pits is that the soil in that area is basically farmed land, slightly clay soil, overlying sand and gravels. It is the sand and gravel that we want to extract from the borrow pits, in order to be able to use them as fill material in the power station. In return, we want to put the material that Ian mentioned from the power station site. Immediately underlying the topsoils and groundsoil on the power station ground is quite a thick layer of peat and clay. It is quite a mixture of peat and clay, and it is not really suitable for any of the purposes that we have on the site, either for landscaping or for use in construction. The process would be simply to strip the topsoil off borrow pits, extract the sands and gravels, put those on to the stockpile, excavate the peat and clay from the main site and put those into the borrow pits. Then cover the borrow pits back over with the original soils and return that back to the farmland that it is at the moment.

Water management zones are there to deal with the fact that, during the construction activities, we are going to be using quite a lot of hardstanding. That creates a certain amount of water runoff when it rains. We collect that water and divert it to the water management zones. In this particular area, the soil is generally quite sandy, certainly on the eastern part of the site. We expect the water management zones then to allow us to infiltrate that rainwater back into the groundwater system, such that it is effectively replicating what would have happened had it been a greenfield site.

In some areas, we have provision for overflow from the water management zones into one of the local watercourses. The water quality will be monitored as it goes into the water management zone and we will do what is necessary, potentially with filtration in particular, if there is a high sediment burden, to avoid that going further than the water management zone. The overflows would be of clean water, if necessary. The water management zones are sized, generally, so that we do not expect overflow except in very exceptional rainfall conditions. It is a purification, monitoring and re-filtration process that we use the water management zones for.

Peter Palmer, Aldeburgh Town Council

I have a transport issue. One of major issues with this construction is of course the road transport situation. Can I ask, of each of the various schemes for bringing stuff in by sea and rail, what the daily numbers would be?

Richard Bull

As I mentioned earlier, we have rail and sea proposals. We obviously have a proposal to bring HGVs on the roads. We also have to do traffic modelling, which makes assumptions on the numbers of those. The assumptions we have made for HGV numbers will accommodate either what we call a marine-max, or rail-max strategy, so something that leads on either rail or marine delivery of materials. The consultation document sets a minimum of 60% materials by weight for those modes of transport, so the balance will be by road. Our assumptions for HGVs essentially cover that 40%, but we would hope that the actual numbers would be lower and that we would be able to achieve greater numbers through rail or sea.

I would say that, within the full consultation document in the transport chapter, we have a number of locations with traffic counts, which detail existing traffic and traffic in 2024, which is our assumed peak construction year, currently at stage 2. It also details additional traffic flows, non-HGV flows, HGV flows and bus flows. For HGV flows, we list a typical day and essentially the busiest day. On a typical day in the peak construction period, so the busiest one to two years of the project, our HGV numbers will be 225 HGVs or 450 two-way movements. That is a peak


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construction period average. On the busiest day you could expect throughout the whole construction period, which probably would be in the peak period, it would be double that. That would be the busiest day you would ever have, which would be 450 HGVs for the construction site or 900 movements. That is all detailed within the document. I hope that answers your question.

Terry Hodgson, Leiston-cum-Sizewell Town Council

Could I have some more detail about the final appearance of the site, how that is going to be dealt with and how the consultation on that is going to happen? There was talk of consultation with the district councils; is there any more detail of that?

Ian Bryant

In this consultation, we have very much provided an outline of the layout and form of the development. We are working with our architects on those elements of the power station where we can have some influence over external treatment, in particular buildings like the turbine halls, which are big features in the landscape.

With regard to the concrete structures including the reactor buildings, we do need to inspect the external surface of that concrete. Now, what we say in the consultation and what we have said in meetings before is that it would not be impossible to do something different with that concrete, but that it would practically be very difficult to continue to inspect that concrete externally.

Also, if any proposal were to go against the generic design assessment that has been approved for the EPR, we have been clear not to want different generic designs around the country. We have a history of tweaking designs to our power stations in the UK and are looking to avoid this for the RPR fleet. As we have to inspect the external surface of the concrete structures for safety purposes, they will remain as concrete. I would say that that, for some of the very prominent structures, including the turbine halls and the office building you will see through the turbine halls, (which are nearer the coastline than the reactor, which is set back a bit), we can look at the treatment of those. We will be working with your officials in the councils to do that in the run-up to stage3.

We will also be looking particularly at the way we work on these buildings with regard to Sizewell B. The Sizewell B dome is slightly higher than the Sizewell C domes anyway. It is slightly higher and a prominent feature. We still want Sizewell B to be an eye-catching feature as you walk along the coast. That will be part of the approach to arriving at a good solution to the development.

Tim Rowan-Robinson, The Suffolk Coast DMO

Tourism obviously employs a lot of people in area. You are looking to employ a lot of local people. There is only a certain amount of unemployment in the area. I am wondering how you are intending to entice people out of their jobs.

Rebecca Calder

Displacement of people from existing jobs is a real issue for us, on which we are going to be working a lot. That covers everything from the fire service, through tourism to supply chain and engineering jobs. It is something we need to look at, which is why we have assumptions about local and non-local employment. We are not assuming we can pull everyone locally, because obviously we do need people to stay in local jobs as well. We will have a jobs brokerage, and the role of that, if it works like it does at Hinkley, which it probably will, is that if people who live within a 90-minute radius send in CVs, we will look at those and see how they match to the project


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and whether they need any upskilling to get on. What we can also do is to have a look at those CVs and say, ‘Well, actually you’re probably not quite ready for our project but, if we are displacing somebody in a particular sector, maybe we can backfill here.’

For tourism in particular, the feedback we are getting is that a lot of local people work six months in a temporary job. When management staff need to come in, they often come from outside the area. We are hoping to have a structure similar to Somerset Larder, where you have a big structure providing catering, campus facilities, laundry and cleaning, but there might actually be more chances for local people to upskill in tourism, so that more of the managers come through that sort of route. I hope that it will be positive in terms of tourism skills, as well as negative, but really the brokerage is what would tackle the displacement issues.

Tim Rowan-Robinson

Presumably your unskilled labour cost is rather higher than it is here, at the moment.

Rebecca Calder

Again, that is something that we are talking to the councils about a lot. I think they have a fairly pragmatic view. We do not want to displace, but we want to ensure that people are paid a reasonable wage. If the issue is that people are not being paid a reasonable wage, the council is less concerned about that. Yes, we will have to look at levels in the area and ensure that we do not displace. It is a good thing as well to bring in highly paid or well paid jobs into the area. It retains young people for a start; it means they have a real career option here. A lot of young people from Suffolk go off to university and do not come back. We are hoping that we will provide a real alternative now, with this project.

Ian Pratt, Suffolk Coastal District Council

On page 15 and the caravan park proposal, will there be any access to Valley Road? I have had a few residents asking about access to Valley Road, which happens to be a shortcut into the town.

Richard Bull

Access to Valley Road is from Lover’s Lane, which is the end where the vans will be. There will be an entrance from Valley Road into the land east of Eastlands Industrial Estate in that top corner of the field. That access will be widened slightly for the road there.

Ian Pratt

There is no access coming back from Valley Road. (It is on page 26).

Richard Bull

Do you mean coming from Lover’s Lane? It is probably slightly clearer on the rail diagram on page 23, actually. With regards to the whole field, the land that we are looking to develop shows a kind of railhead there. There will be three accesses to that land. There will be an access pretty much opposite where it is currently, but just the other side of the rail line from King George’s Avenue. There will be an access directly from Lover’s Lane, which you can see is a blue triangle on the drawing on page 23. There will also be an access from Valley Road, but at the Lover’s Lane end, just for the caravan site. It is difficult to see, but it is on that drawing.


1 December 2016

Geoff Abell, Dunwich Parish Meeting

Can we assume that, with a construction of this magnitude, we are talking about 24-hour construction periods? What mitigation is going to be in place against noise and light pollution, apart from leaving a fairly narrow band of woodlands, as far as I can see? What representations have you had on that subject from RSPB?

Jim Crawford

There will be a limited number of periods, such as large concrete pours, where 24-hour working will be essential. However, they will very much be seen as the exception. As we did with Sizewell B and as are the plans for Hinkley Point C, the work will mostly be on an extended day pattern. We do not plan to have 24-hour working on a regular basis. As I said, that will be driven by the activities that take place.

In terms of lighting and noise, under the regulations according to which we have to submit our application, we are heavily controlled. Much of our legislation wants us to act as good neighbours. Lighting will be essential. We have to provide lighting for safety and security. That lighting will be controlled and the design of it will form part of the submission. We will do things like keep the lights away from boundaries where possible. I do not know the technical name, but we will use a shade that means the lighting stays down and is not reflected up into the sky. A lot of work is going on at Hinkley that we will learn from and that will all be part of the process. It has to be there, but we are very conscious of making it as unobtrusive as possible.

Ben McFarland, RSPB Minsmere Nature Reserve

I am from the RSPB, based in Minsmere. We have been working very closely with EDF and we do have a lot of concerns in relation to noise. Unfortunately, some of the details that we are concerned about regarding noise have not actually been published in this consultation document, so we will be expecting some of those details to come out in phase 3. We are certainly concerned about the noise aspect.

Jeff Hallett, Pettistree Parish Council

What are the surfaces going to be for the park and ride, including the emergency area near Wickham Market? How will they be restored after completion? Secondly, what is this slightly sinister-sounding thing, the postal consolidation facility?

Richard Bull

The postal consolidation is really just a centre where, for a number of couriers delivering to the site, allows us to consolidate a number of deliveries in one place, rather than have them all going to the main site. It is just an area where we can essentially take small deliveries, consolidate them and move them on in a larger vehicle. It would not be a huge operation, but just somewhere where we can manage that.

In terms of surfacing, as I understand it, the main area for the car park will obviously be a hard surface. After use, we would have to return that to agricultural land, so it would have to go. The area for the holding facility for HGVs would not be in regular use, so could be somewhat different. I am not sure that we have settled on a specific surface for that.


1 December 2016

Jeff Hallett

It sounds as though you do not know at the moment.

Richard Bull

I personally do not know, but I know that there have been discussions about what we do not want. We do not want to tarmac the whole thing, but want something that is much more sympathetic to the environment. Grasscrete has been mentioned but I cannot, hand on my heart, say that that is a definite strategy. Something like that would be more sympathetic. That partially answers your question.

Kenneth Parry Brown, Peasenhall Parish Council

These questions are particularly about transport matters. We noticed that you have changed from a lorry park down at the A14 to a delivery management system. My worry would be, first of all, that lorries coming perhaps from the Midlands along the A14 and up the A12 have to arrive at a particular time, but they could have left with an hour to spare or two hours to spare. These lorries will want to park up somewhere until their allotted space at the site. What arrangements are being made to look after them? What positive action are we taking to ensure that the outbound lorries follow the routes that you designate?

Richard Bull

In terms of managing the designated route, we will have cameras in place. Obviously we can cross-check incoming vehicles when it registers with a camera on the main site. We can then see where that vehicle has previously registered on that journey. It would need to trigger a number of cameras en route to be accepted.

On your point about vehicles going away, I think you are suggesting that once they have discharged their materials, essentially they can go any way they wanted, because they are leaving the site. Obviously we would have to work with our suppliers and our hauliers to ensure that they adhere to a code of practice. They would be instructed to stick to the HGV routes, both coming in and going out. In the main, we would be dealing with large companies and we would expect that to be adhered to. If there were isolated occurrences where people did not follow the procedure, there would be action and it would potentially be banning hauliers or people who were not able or willing to stick to our strict procedures. That will be enforced. It is currently being enforced at Hinkley and it will be enforced here, but I take your point about vehicles leaving the site. We need to ensure they use the same route that they used on the way in.

Your other question was about vehicles parking up and that is a valid challenge as well. We have been to Felixstowe to look at their system, which is very rigorous. They have very narrow delivery windows. Like everybody else, I am sure you have seen container lorries parked up in a layby on the A14 or wherever, probably because they are a little early for their slot. They might just have to park up for an hour or two before they can hit their slot in Felixstowe. We are aware of that. We will offer more flexibility in terms of our windows. We will also have a holding area at the main site. The last thing we want is for vehicles to be parked along the A12 or anywhere in the local area, waiting for their slot to open on the main site. It would be a case of getting the right level of policing, ensuring that vehicles arrive at the right time, but with enough flexibility to avoid vehicles parking up on the way because they are 15 minutes early. It is something that we are aware of, for which we will need to find a workable solution.


1 December 2016

Roy Dowding, Middleton Cum Fordley Parish Council

For Ian, regarding the SSSI crossing, you gave us figures with the hectares of the land needed for the schemes, which indicated very little difference between them. In the summary document, areas are given in square metres, and the difference between the three span bridge scheme and either of the causeways is considerable. One of the causeways here is a third larger and the other one is more than half larger. That is hardly minimal.

The question for Rebecca is regarding the caravan site. You said that you wanted feedback, but there is very little in the summary document about the caravan site and absolutely no prompt whatsoever to stir people to give an answer in the questionnaire. How are you going to get that feedback?

Mike Stevenson, Rendlesham Parish Council

There is a point within the question here that I picked up on the same issue, so could we deal with it at the same time to save the question being asked again? In the presentation, I notice that the quotes are in hectares. A hectare is 10,000 square metres, in my recollection. In here, as the gentleman pointed out, the units are metres squared, which are substantially lower than the hectares quoted in the presentation. That was my observation; I am just repeating the same question. Thank you, Chairman.

Ian Bryant

It is a fair point that we quote in square metres in one and hectares in the other. The point I wanted to make was that, across the option that we are favouring and the one that uses the least land, as a proportion of the overall land take, the difference is 0.21 of a hectare. In percentage terms that is quite small, as a proportion of the overall site land take. That is the point I really wanted to make.

Rebecca Calder

As this is meant as a consultation, there are proper options on the caravan site. What we have not done is to look at a caravan site and decided to do lots of design work on it, because we genuinely want to know what people think of it. If everybody thinks it is an awful idea, we would need to consider whether to go ahead and progress it. It is a genuine consultation, which is why we have just identified it as an area. I think people will either think it is a good or bad idea. I do not think that they are going to think it is a better idea if we have a lot of details on how caravans should be laid out. We are interested in the whole principle of having a caravan site at that location.

You can answer on that in question five, which asks about accommodation strategy, mentions the campus and the temporary caravan park in Leiston. The main work is in our PRS or tourist accommodation and it just asks people what they think, so question five would be the place to answer. You can answer anywhere you want so, if you write it in a different part of the consultation, we will still pick it up. There is space at the end for general comments and you do not necessarily have to submit a questionnaire either. We will take comments by email and, as Tom mentioned earlier, by phone. We would just say, if you do email in, to label it as a stage 2 response and a formal response to consultation. Tom, do you want to add anything on that point?

Tom McGarry

No.


1 December 2016

Margaret Carswell, Marlesford Parish Council

How many vehicle movements to and from the PR site at Marlesford do you expect in 24 hours?

The village exhibition is about to start. Will there be technical people there who can answer this sort of question?

Jim Crawford

As far as the second question goes, it is the big advantage the exhibitions have. You have all the material, but actually it is staff who are the people who have developed the proposals. They are in the best possible position to have a dialogue and give you the explanation you would want. That is why we have encouraged as many people as possible to turn up to an exhibition, as well as using the materials we are sending out.

Richard Bull

I think the question was about traffic flows through Marlesford.

Margaret Carswell

No, it was about traffic leaving the park and ride. Although it is called Wickham Market, it is actually at Marlesford. How many vehicle movements to and from that park and ride will there be in 24 hours?

Richard Bull

That is a tricky one to answer. Within the consultation document, we have a number of locations where we have recorded traffic flows. They are within section 6 of transport chapter. Against each of those locations, as I said earlier, we have the base flow of the traffic and the projected flow with growth in 2024 and all of our development traffic. It is a bit trickier to give you traffic flows to and from the park and ride. At capacity, if you take Wickham Market, we are looking at 900 vehicles, so you would have 900 cars going in and 900 going out.

Margaret Carswell

That assumes that there is only one shift. What happens if there are two shifts?

Richard Bull

There is that possibility that spaces may be over-utilised by more than one car, but that is something we have not progressed at this point, in terms of shift patterns and how that impacts the park and ride sites. I can tell you what we have assumed in terms of buses from the park and ride site, but I would have to look it up. There is quite a lot of data here that we would need to interrogate to give you the answers that you require.

Tom McGarry

In terms of the presentations, at stage 1 there were plenty of presentations where we actually brought a topic owner or expert, I recall. At Stratford St Andrew, we turned up with a transport expert Roy Collins. At the Dunwich parish meeting, we called upon Mike Lavelle, who is an


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expert on spent fuel, because we expected residents to ask about that. There were several others as well. I recall Dr Steve Mannings coming to Peasenhall as well. We can bring members of the team to areas where we will know what the issues are. However, I will point out that I have digested the main consultation document and can make a good fist of an answer.

Ian Norman, Farnham with Stratford St Andrew Parish Council

My biggest issue with the question from Marlesford is the traffic movements. I know that EDF has done some work over the summer, but I still feel that your traffic movement calculation leaves a bit to be desired. You have added on what you think would be the normal progression in terms of vehicles on the road, but you need to live on the A12 to understand the difficulties that we are experiencing now. If you add on the building of Sizewell C and you would understand the fears of people living on the A12.

Just as an aside, could I ask that, by the next formal meeting, Chairman, we sort out the microphones and acoustics? They are appalling in here.

Brian Stewart

I tend to agree on that latter point. I know you cannot do two things at once, Richard, but can you answer that?

Richard Bull

I think you were just questioning the accuracy of our predictions of traffic flows on the A12 at Marlesford. We have invested a lot of time and thought into traffic modelling. We are projecting traffic flows and increases through to 2024, which include additional developments within the area that we have been asked to include from Suffolk County Council. We have been very clear about the number of HGVs that will be travelling on the A12 each day and returning. I feel that the data we have published within the stage 2 document is comprehensive and reflects an accurate flow along that road in a neutral month of May, which is when the traffic modelling was done and when it needs to be undertaken. I appreciate that there are times, particularly in the summer, which may well be busier, but we feel that the data here is comprehensive and reflects the status of further traffic on that road.

Ben McFarland

I am interested to see that, in your SSSI crossings, it is quite clear that you favour the culvert option. At the same time, your water resource management of the site is very much pushing water out to sea, as much as possible. I assume the culvert is being used as a secondary line of defence, in case of the Minsmere frontage breaching, so you are essentially reducing the risk of that and also your reliance on the Minsmere sluice farther north as well. That is fine in a sense but, at the same time, in the blue document, you state that the beach landing facility will act as a groyne at some point, increasing erosion along the Minsmere frontage. On the one hand, you are basically isolating yourself from the management of Minsmere but at the same time, increasing erosion along that frontage. I would be quite interested to know what plans EDF has for helping the RSPB sustainably adapt to coastal change, given that your development may well increase erosion along the frontage in the future.


1 December 2016


You made the very big presumption that our development will in fact influence what happens along the Minsmere frontage. We have put a lot of time and effort into doing hydraulic modelling into what goes on in that system. You are right that the Minsmere sluice acts as a hard point and it tends to anchor material, both to the north and south of that hard point. It effectively divides the bay into two separate bays. However, the influence of any hard point is quite limited in terms of its ability to affect the shoreline to the north and south of it. Our assessments are that we are talking a few hundred metres, at most, in terms of the ability to influence erosion or accretion at that point.

In terms of the beach landing facility, the design that we are looking at is intended to be passive at this point in time, so it has no influence at this point. In the event that there is erosion in the southern part of the Minsmere area affecting the Sizewell frontage, and it starts to erode the area around the beach landing facility, it will start to become exposed and seek to anchor the sediment flows immediately to the north and to the south. That would have a very limited impact on the southern end of the Minsmere frontage, which is not where we predict a likely breach in the event of significant erosion down that coastline. We do not think that, in the short term, there will be any effect at all from the beach landing facility.

In that event of significant erosion in that area, it will seek to anchor that particular point and for a short distance north and south. We do not feel that that will have a significant effect on the evolution of the overall Minsmere frontage. There is a significant area to the north of the Minsmere sluice and the most likely breach areas are in fact north and south of the Minsmere sluice, rather than farther south. Obviously we have a headland at the moment in the form of Goose Hill, which acts as a natural feature, which tends to isolate the hydraulic areas of Minsmere from the Sizewell belts. It is only the Sizewell drain, which then connects up to the Minsmere sluice, which connects those two areas.

Our proposals do not involve moving groundwater anywhere other than where it goes at the moment. Our proposals for discharge to sea are basically the return of cooling water that we extract from the sea, which probably goes straight back there, and any treated sewage. We would expect to treat that sewage on the site, and put clean sewage discharge into the outfall. We are not really looking to use that drainage system in excess of what it does at the moment. The construction area in particular will go back to where it is, in the new proposals. It is mainly heathland. That will effectively act as a green field and reduce the amount of runoff, roughly back to current levels. We will take that back into the groundwater system. We have done a lot of groundwater modelling, as part of the proposals and are going to be displaying the results in stage 3, but we expect to be able to demonstrate that our impact on particularly the Sizewell Belt, which is the most local area, is minimal and the impact on Minsmere is equally minimal.

Ben McFarland

Can I just say that our technical extrapolation lasts 160 years, and the coastline is extremely complicated and unpredictable. Based on the precautionary principle under HRO assessment, I would say that my question still stands, but obviously I can raise this outside the meeting.

Pat Hogan

I have concerns that are many and varied. Depending on where your house is or how much you use the beach or the road, etc., some are more concerned about the SSSI, some light or noise. The thing that is mostly coming to me is concern about the use of Lover’s Lane. I am pleased about the access road, in one sense, but it seems to gloss over the use of Lover’s Lane before that access road


1 December 2016

is ready. Presumably that will take one or two years or Lover’s Lane will be used for one or two years before the access road is ready. What are the details on that? For that road, we have always been concerned that that is the only access road to the A and the B sites. Obviously traffic for tourism, the Christian Conference Centre, the houses and the Galloper Wind Farm use that one route. I understand that that is going to be quite heavily used in the first two years. That is my question.

Hugh Hutton

You obviously know the Sizewell site and area. You will also know that the access route up past Sizewell A and B is quite convoluted. It acts as a natural restriction on the amount of traffic we can take up that road and, therefore, the amount of traffic we can bring along Lover’s Lane. We are very clear that, as soon as we can get a SSSI crossing in place, we can use the northern access as the primary access to the site. It is in the interests of the existing power stations, as well as the local residents, to make that happen as quickly as possible.

However, you have identified correctly that, in the early years, we need to use Lover’s Lane as the access to the site and Sizewell Gap. The traffic that we put on that road will be contained as far as we can. I think there are some traffic projections that we have displayed in the document, so we have some actual numbers in section 6 of the main consultation document for you to look at. It is in our interests and the existing power stations’ interests, as well as your interests, to shorten that period as much as we can, to minimise the amount of traffic going through that route and get the northern access route in as soon as possible.

Pat Hogan

In relation to that regarding the caravan site, initially it matters what the caravan site is like.

Brian Stewart

Sorry, you must ask a question.

Pat Hogan

I will ask a question: will the caravan site also have to use Lover’s Lane to have access in the first two years?

Richard Bull

That is correct, yes.

Mike Stevenson

Just looking at the beach landing facility proposals, as I read them, only option 1 supports seaborne delivery of bulk materials. I guess we are talking aggregates, etc. If you go into any of the other options, do they imply that all of the aggregates will be delivered by road, compared to what was done for Sizewell B - then they were directly discharged from the sea to an aggregate handling plant?


1 December 2016

Hugh Hutton

You are right about the design of the jetties. Option 1 is for import and export of the bulk materials, which would include sand, aggregates and potentially cement. The alternative to that is rail transport. We are not looking to bring sands and aggregates in by road if we can possibly help. It is material that is ideally suited to sea or rail transport, and that would form the bulk of the deliveries. As Richard mentioned when he was going through the presentation, a high proportion of the total tonnage of materials required for the power station is those bulk materials, and our plan is to bring them in by rail. Clearly as Richard said, we have to get the capacity analysis out of Network Rail in order to be able to deliver that or we have to bring them in by sea.

Joan Girling, Together Against Sizewell C (TASC)

Bear in mind that we have waited four years for this consultation; a lot of people have put their lives on hold because of it. Very early on in the presentation, you put up a timeline of the processes that we are going through. I would like to know the timescales, because we do not know where we are at the moment. We could be another year or two. It would be very nice to know the timescales.

The other point I would like to make is why ‘temporary’ can be anything from a year to five years to 10 years. It is not quoted in the documents. This will be temporary for a year or it might be for 10 years. If I understand it correctly, the jetty is a 10-year temporary project and the access road is a 10-year temporary project, but it may be needed for a permanent purpose and reduced in size. It would be useful to have those points made.

Jim Crawford

I understand the frustration. For a project of this magnitude and with the extent of the consultation, it would be foolish and disrespectful to lay out a fixed timetable, moving forward. A lot of what we do, for example the time it takes us to move from stage 2 to stage 3, depends to a great extent on the feedback we get from stage 2. If we have to do some extra modelling or rework some proposals that will inject some time to the programme. There is some way to go before we are in a position to make a final investment decision. The DCO process itself, once we are ready with a submission, takes about 18 months for people to look at. I am conscious of the delay there has been since stage 1. The concern that has been created by a number of people who have not in fact heard anything from us is exactly why we are doing this as soon as possible after the Hinkley Point decision. All we can do is continue to communicate the progress we are making as we go, but I cannot lay out a timetable for you, I am afraid, because I do not know what I am going to get from the studies we do and the feedback we receive from this consultation.

Joan Girling

That is not okay, but I understand what Jim is saying. A lot of people have their lives on hold. A lot of people are being very badly affected by it and it would be nice to know, within some sort of timescale, where we are, especially us older people who think that all see this might see me out.

Jim Crawford

I am one of those older people. All we can do is give you the commitment that we will communicate this as best we can. It would be wrong of me to put fixed timescales and then either disappoint or give people a different view. As things go on, we will come back, in four months or so, with the feedback from stage 2, and that will help inform this going forward.


1 December 2016

Most of the ones that say ‘temporary’ will be based on the fact that it is a projected 10-year construction programme. I do not know if anybody has a view on anything that might be seen as less than that. Another thing to remember is, as illustrated by Rebecca, there is not a continuous one level throughout the project. There are two peaks in terms of workload, one, two or three years in, when we do most of the civils work, then it will drop down a little when we finish buildings, etc. Towards the end, there will be another peak as we start to install equipment. It will change, but in general terms the temporary time frame will be for a 10-year period, with a few minor exceptions.

Rebecca Calder

That is except for the access road, which is permanent in the site.

Joan Girling

Is it going to remain the size that it is to start with or will it be reduced in size?

Ian Bryant

I mentioned in my presentation that the roundabout and the access road alignment will use that road during construction, but there is going to be a wider thoroughfare to accommodate big construction trucks and the like. Once we have built the power station, our aim is to reduce the width of that road. We are really going to try to design it to be more akin to a country road. I mentioned that it will not be lit. The other thing is that we have opportunities to do some land-forming around the access road, as it goes across the field. We will have some material left over, we think, from the spoil management operation, which could be useful in terms of breaking up the appearance of the road. We will do all we can to subdue the impact of that thoroughfare going across the heathland area.

Brian Stewart

Do you have an answer for Margaret yet, Richard?

Richard Bull

It may not be the sort of answer I think Margaret would want, actually. It is half an answer, I am afraid. The tricky one to answer is how many vehicles will be used in the park and ride, so I need to check the assumptions we have used in our traffic modelling. I am sorry; I do not have that information here. Obviously it will be 900 or more. It may be 900, but it may make some assumptions to utilise single spaces for more than just one vehicle.

Jim Crawford

Can I suggest that, rather than do this on the hoof, we will go away, look at the numbers in detail and come back to you, Margaret, outside the form, if that is okay? I would much rather that you had an accurate number that we have had time to look at, rather than giving you a very estimate estimation. We would like to be a bit more accurate, if you are happy with that.

Richard Bull

I can give a more accurate number on bus movements. The assumption for bus movements from Wickham Market, within the traffic modelling, is 210 two-way movements from that site. We


1 December 2016

think that that is a high estimate, but it is purposely high, based on the assumption that the traffic modelling is on a worst-case basis.

Margaret Carswell

Is that joining the A12 from that little side road?

Richard Bull

There are 370 HGV movements as well, along that length of the A12, on a typical day at peak.

Brian Stewart

Margaret, you will receive a thorough answer to that.

We have now gone round the table. Obviously I am in your hands, in terms of how many people want to ask questions, how detailed they are and also the detail of the answers given. In view of the time, I am not proposing to go round the table again. I want to suggest that if you have additional questions, you can always email them or ask the same questions at the remaining exhibitions. You did hear the offer from Tom that, in the New Year, the team would be happy to come out and try to reach some of the hard-to-reach groups that we are trying to get to in this consultation. Please take that offer genuinely and seriously. I am going to bring this meeting to a close, rather than go round once again.

There will be a note taken of this meeting, into which I will certainly have some input, in terms of signing it off as the minutes of this meeting, which will be made available at our next forum meeting. Bearing in mind Jim’s comments, we cannot be too precise about when that will be, because we do not know about the complexity of the responses that need to be analysed. I tend to work in meteorological seasons, so I am saying spring and this time I am going to be specific about the year, so spring 2017 might be a reasonable time. You will be given proper notice of that as things become clearer. As Tom made clear, we have this project back on a reasonable agenda now. It will move forward quickly, at a much brisker pace, than it has been to date. I look forward to seeing you all again. Have a safe journey home, a good Christmas and a happy new year. We will meet again in spring 2017, subject to the complexity of the consultation responses. Thank you all very much for coming.

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1 December 2016 - EDF Energy · 1 December 2016 Project Overview Jim Crawford Sizewell C Project...

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